乔治·艾利斯

乔治·弗朗西斯·雷纳·艾利斯（英语：George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon. RSSAf，1939年8月11日—）是南非开普敦大学数学与应用数学系的荣誉退休教授，专长于复杂系统研究。他与剑桥大学的著名物理学家史蒂芬·霍金共同撰写了1973年出版的《时空的大尺度结构》，并被视为全球顶尖的宇宙学理论家之一。从1989年至1992年，他曾担任国际广义相对论与引力学会的会长，并且曾任国际科学与宗教学会的主席。此外，他也是南非国家研究基金会的A级研究员。

艾利斯是一位活跃的贵格会信徒，在1970年代和1980年代南非国民党执政时期，他公开反对种族隔离制度。同时，他在这段期间将研究重心转向宇宙学的哲学层面，并因此于2004年荣获邓普顿奖。

George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon. FRSSAf (born 11 August 1939), is the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. From 1989 to 1992 he served as president of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. He is a past president of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is an A-rated researcher with the NRF.

Ellis, an active Quaker, was a vocal opponent of apartheid during the National Party reign in the 1970s and 1980s, and it is during this period that Ellis's research focused on the more philosophical aspects of cosmology, for which he won the Templeton Prize in 2004. He was also awarded the Order of the Star of South Africa by Nelson Mandela in 1999. On 18 May 2007, he was elected a fellow of the British Royal Society.

Life

Born in 1939 to George Rayner Ellis, a newspaper editor, and Gwendoline Hilda MacRobert Ellis in Johannesburg, George Francis Rayner Ellis attended the University of Cape Town, where he graduated with honours in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics with distinction. He represented the university in fencing, rowing and flying.

While a student at St John's College, Cambridge, where he received a PhD in applied maths and theoretical physics in 1964, he was on college rowing teams.

At Cambridge, Ellis served as a research fellow from 1965 to 1967, was assistant lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics until 1970, and was then appointed university lecturer, serving until 1974.

Ellis became a visiting professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago in 1970, a lecturer at the Cargese Summer School in Corsica in 1971 and the Erice Summer School in Sicily in 1972, and a visiting H3 professor at the University of Hamburg, also in 1972.

The following year, Ellis co-wrote The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with Stephen Hawking, debuting at a strategic moment in the development of General Relativity Theory.

In the following year, Ellis returned to South Africa to accept an appointment as professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town, a position he held until his retirement in 2005.

In 2005 Ellis appeared as a guest speaker at the Nobel Conference in St. Peter, Minnesota.

Work

George Ellis has worked for many decades on anisotropic cosmologies (Bianchi models) and inhomogeneous universes, and on the philosophy of cosmology. He is currently writing on the emergence of complexity, and the way this is enabled by top-down causation in the hierarchy of complexity. Ellis has also collaborated with Teppo Felin, Denis Noble, and Jan Koenderink on a set of articles published in the journal Genome Biology in 2021. In terms of philosophy of science, Ellis is a Platonist.

Publications

Papers

Ellis has over 500 published articles; including 17 in Nature. Notable papers include:

Honours

In 2019 Rhodes University in Grahamstown announced that it would award Ellis an honorary doctorate in laws (LLD, hc).